Firefox OS has been around for some time now, but it's lacked really stand-out hardware. A big part of that is how the platform is positioned, and with a focus on developing markets and budget-priced handsets, it's been hard for any phones to really shine. But then late last month we saw the launch of a Firefox phone that couldn't help itself but to be eye-catching: the LG-made Fx0 for Japan. Now, Japan is a long way to go to check out a smartphone – even one with as snazzy a design as the Fx0. But luckily for us, this guy launched just weeks ahead of CES 2105, and as we hit the show ...

Apple hasn't always been the most welcoming platform when it comes to third-party software that – at least in Apple's eyes – replicates the company's own apps that ship with iOS. That's delayed the arrival of things like alternate keyboards, though the situation is getting better over time. Even where the company allows such apps, this idea that you just can't compete (successfully) with Apple has limited the availability of many alternatives – and that's still the case with browsers. While we see the presence of big names like Chrome, others have been absent – notably Mozilla with ...

Mobile devices used to be primarily portable email boxes with integrated calendar and contacts. In the early days, some of them may have included web browsers, but they were very primitive. Back then the Web was very complex, and designed for screens with resolutions of 800 by 600 and higher. To accommodate phones and PDAs a "new" web was invented, one that used a completely different protocol to address the concerns of much smaller screens, slower processors, and mobile data plans. None of which were anywhere close to what we have today. WAP & WML This "new" web was based on something ...

Delivering apps as web services, rather than natively-packaged code, can have a lot of appeal to developers: it can streamline distribution (including that of updates), allow you to reach users across platform boundaries, and speed development time. That's not to say that web apps aren't without their own set of problems, and one such issue has concerned just how we interact with these apps on our smartphones: sure, we can pin a bookmark to a web app on our home screen, but then what about the app drawer? And how would the web app look when we're trying to switch between open apps? Last ...

It's far from the most popular browser out there, but tens of millions of users have still downloaded Mozilla's Firefox for Android. All those people might want to be thinking twice about the sites they visit tonight, upon news arriving of a remote exploit for the browser going up for sale on the black market. When Firefox for Android attempts to connect to a compromised server, this exploit can make the browser download and open a file without any interaction from the user. If sideloading is enabled, those files can include APKs, in which case it can just be a simple matter of tricking ...

Watch today's Pocketnow Daily as we talk about how Google is ditching Webkit for their own Blink in the Chrome browser, and even Samsung is doing something similar by partnering with Mozilla. Then we talk Samsung again as their new US retail experience begins this month on Best Buy. We later talk some Nokia and the possibility of the Catwalk being launched on May 15th. Later we find some leaked images of a possible iPhone prototype with a curved display and curved back. We end today's show talking about the Facebook Home Android Launcher, and also about the new HTC First which will be the ...

If you didn't think the browser wars had begun in mobile, think again. We were just reporting that Google is moving away from Apple's WebKit in future versions of Google Chrome, and as it turns out, they're not alone. This time though, it's Samsung, and apparently what they want to do is move away from Google. We've always said that Samsung only uses Android to power TouchWiz on Android smartphones, as it's clear that the company does away with almost every aspect of stock Android on their smartphones. Now it seems that Samsung also wants an alternative to the Google Chrome browser by ...

I'm not just Joe the Android Guy, I'm also Joe the Web Guy: during the day I write web pages for a local company. I've been in web development since 1994 and have seen a lot come and go. The biggest differences I've seen have been centered around web browsers. Back in the mid- to late-90's browsers had radically different features and functionalities. Developers had to write their code for one browser or the other, or put in a lot more work to make things "pixel perfect" across the two biggies: Internet Explorer and Netscape. History Netscape lost that battle, but before they died they ...